LEARNED SOCIETIES. In the era of the Enlightenment_ cultural

							LEARNED SOCIETIES. In the era of the Enlightenment, cultural pursuits characteristically took
the form of the learned society. This phenomenon grew to the extent that Bernard Le Bovier de
Fontenelle labeled his Century the “Age of Academies.” In 1747, the marquis d’Argenson of the
Prussian Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres elaborated, saying, “Literary and learned
Europe now constitutes, so to speak, a single society, united in a common purpose—the progress of
the sciences and letters—in which each academy becomes a kind of Congress.” Similarly, in 1763
for Richard de Ruffey, president of the Académie Royale des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres of
Dijon, “The academies form various colonies in the Republic of Letters.”

Contemporary learned societies were primarily urban phenomena and took their place alongside
other contemporary urban institutions. Eighteenth-century Paris was best endowed with learned
societies, embracing the Académie Française (1635), the Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture
(1648), the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1663), the Académie Royale des
Sciences (1666), and others devoted to architecture (1671), music (1672), surgery (1748), and
medicine (1778). London boasted the Royal Society of London (1662), the Royal Society of
Antiquaries (1751), the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and
Commerce (1754), and the Royal Academy of Arts (1768). Saint Petersburg, Stockholm, and
Copenhagen each possessed national language, fine arts, and science academies. In Madrid, there
were learned societies for history, and belles-letters, and the Real Academia Española de la Lengua,
devoted to the Spanish language (1713). The famous Institute in Bologna (1714) incorporated two
independent academies: one for the sciences, another for belles-lettres. Less prosperous polities
typically incorporated several disciplinary areas within a single learned society, as seen in the many
academies of sciences, belles-lettres, and arts that dotted the French provinces, or in Frederick II’s
Académie Royale des Sciences and Belles-Lettres in Berlin (1744), which included an
extraordinary class of speculative philosophy. In the end, eighteenth-century learned societies
incorporated a multitude of different disciplines: archaeology, architecture, agriculture, antiquities,
the mechanical arts, economics, history, languages, literature, medicine, music, painting,
philosophy, poetry, religion, sculpture, surgery, and the sciences—both in general and focused on
particular disciplines, such as botany, cartography, meteorology, or naval sciences.

Contemporary learned societies spread across Europe, from the Kongelige Norske Videnskabers
Selskab (1760) in Trondheim in the north to the Reale Accademia delle Scienze e Belle-Lettere
(1778) in Naples in the south, and from the Academia Scientiarum Imperialis (1724) in Saint
Petersburg in the east to the Academia Real des Ciências de Lisboa (1779) in the west. Learned
groups of one sort or another penetrated to virtually every level in the provinces of Europe. The
extension of contemporary learned societies beyond the boundaries of Europe and into colonial
settings also speaks to the expansive geography of the phenomenon of the learned society in the
eighteenth century and to its transnational character. In this regard, consider the American
Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1768), the Bataviaasch Gnootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen (Batavia, 1778), the Asiatic Society of Calcutta (1784), and the Société Royale des
Sciences et Arts (Haiti, 1784). The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston, 1780) may
be added to this list, as well as private societies elsewhere in the postrevolutionary United States.
Private societies existed in Brazil from the 1720s, including an Academia Cientifica do Rio de
Janerio (1772–1775).

Renaissance Academies

The organizational and institutional character of eighteenth-century learned societies developed
from Renaissance antecedents and the humanist movement. By the fifteenth century, Renaissance
humanism began to take on significant organizational and institutional dimensions, and hundreds of
literary and fine arts societies sprang up outside the universities, wherever educated people
gathered. Ficino’s Accademia Platonica, founded in Florence in 1442, is sometimes pointed to as
the first of this new type of organization, although Michele Maylender signals the Accademia
Aldina (1495), associated with the Aldine press, as the first formal “Renaissance” academy. One
source indicates that around seven hundred new “academies” arose in the sixteenth century alone,
mostly in Italy, and Maylender’s comprehensive survey of such associations lists approximately
twenty-five hundred appearing in the period 1500–1800. Renaissance academies took an interest in
a broad range of cultural subjects: art, music, literature, language, architecture, poetry, history,
archaeology, religion, the theater, the hunt, and equestrian and military arts. Renaissance academies
devoted to science emerged comparatively late, but notable organizations such as the Accademia
dei Lincei (Rome, 1603–1630) and the Accademia del Cimento (Florence, 1657–1667) took up
scientific investigations and became rallying points for their members.

Renaissance academies exemplify changed conditions for the organization of learning in the early
modern period. These groups, however, were neither formally chartered nor state-supported
institutions, and because they depended on the patronage of their noble sponsors, Renaissance
academies for the most part were ephemeral organizations. By the same token, Renaissance-style
academies continued to exist and expand in the eighteenth century, particularly in Italy. Many were
obscure and transitory, but one, the movable Academia Naturae Curiosorum (1677), remained a
high-status institution of science and medicine throughout the eighteenth century. A distinctive
feature of these academies was the occasional spawning of daughter organizations or “colonies,” as
evidenced by the many Arcadia, or poetry academies, that spread throughout Italy. In yet other
cases, Renaissance-style academies became transformed into typical eighteenth-century learned
societies; thus, the Accademia Virgiliana of Mantua (1686) became the Reale Accademia di
Scienze, Lettere ed Arti of Mantua in 1768.

Function and Place in Society

A public, civic function for learned societies began to emerge with the Florentine Accademia del
Designo (1562) and Accademia della Crusca (1584), the former dictating artistic and architectural
standards for Medici Florence and the latter compiling an Italian dictionary. These formalizing
tendencies became firmly established with the Académie Française (1635), the flurry of learned
society creations under Louis XIV, and the foundation of the Royal Society of London (1662).
Several features distinguish these institutions and successor societies from previous organizational
settings for science and learning. First, they were official corporate bodies with charters issued by
the nation-state or other governing authority. To varying degrees, these societies received financial
support from the state, and they reciprocally performed official functions as part of formal or
informal government bureaucracies. They had patrons, but the role of the patron declined to
eventual insignificance. They devoted themselves explicitly to research and to advancing their
areas of expertise. Unlike universities, their intellectual commitments were not subservient to other
institutional goals, and they essentially did no teaching. This set of characteristics distinguishes
eighteenth-century-style learned societies from their Renaissance predecessors and from
contemporary universities.

Enlightenment Learned Societies

Although they need to be distinguished from universities, in some senses eighteenth-century
learned societies complemented them. Contemporaries commonly claimed that academies and
societies were institutions for creating knowledge, whereas universities were places for transmitting
it. In any event, ties between learned society and university were often close. In the Russian
System, the Imperial Academy in Saint Petersburg officially was above the university and the
gymnasium, and the Bolognese literary and scientific academies were the formal research arms of
the University of Bologna. The Königliche Societät der Wissenschaften of Göttingen (1752) was
informally but closely connected to the university. Scientific societies also established
links—sometimes formal, sometimes informal—with observatories and botanical gardens. The
Academy of Sciences in Paris, for example, was closely associated with the Observatoire Royal and
the Jardin du Roi. In Berlin, Stockholm, and Saint Petersburg, the local academies controlled an
associated observatory. The Royal Society of London was the nominal “overseer” of the Royal
Observatory at Greenwich.

The number of official learned societies grew exponentially after 1700 as part of a Europe-wide
institutional movement. Among scientific societies, for example, the first half of the century
witnessed the creation of the leading national institutions: London (1662), Paris (1666), Berlin
(1700), Saint Petersburg (1724), Stockholm (1739), and Copenhagen (1742). Major provincial and
regional societies arose at this time in Montpellier (1706), Bordeaux (1712), Bologna (1714),
Lyons (1724), Dijon (1725, 1740), and Uppsala (1728). The period following 1750 saw the
appearance of societies in lesser European states and provinces: Göttingen (1752), Turin (1757),
Munich (1759), Mannheim (1763), Barcelona (1764), Brussels (1769), Padua (1779), and
Edinburgh (1783), among other locales. The learned society movement became such an
institutional trend that in the case of the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (1752), for
example, the lack of a comparable local institution provided a motive to create one. By 1789, about
seventy formally chartered scientific societies existed in Europe.

Among at least a certain class of urban dwellers, the formation of learned societies represented an
expression of contemporary sociability, and dozens of unofficial organizations complemented the
set of formally chartered institutions. Some, like the Naturforschende Gesellschaft of Danzig
(1743) or the Società Italiana of Verona (1782), remained private but enjoyed a high status. Many
others were on their way to formal recognition by the end of the century. Many more ephemeral
societies spread across England, the Low Countries, Germany, and Italy, bringing the world of
science and polite learning to urban centers and literate communities of all sizes. In Britain, a
distinctive form of provincial society, the Literary and Philosophical Society, appeared toward the
end of the eighteenth century; such societies in Manchester (1781), Derby (1783), and Newcastle-
upon-Tyne (1793) constituted early instances, and their numbers grew into the nineteenth century.
An informal club, the Lunar Society of Birmingham (1766–1791), is often cited in this context as
evidence of the coming together of contemporary science and technology and because of its
extraordinary membership, which included Joseph Priestley, James Watt, Matthew Boulton, and
Erasmus Darwin.

Why would virtually every Western polity—from the Holy Roman Empire to the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania—charter learned societies? The primary answer is the perceived usefulness of
these institutions. In a quid pro quo exchange between state and institution, societies delivered
technical expertise in support of governance, and, in return, societies received recognition, aid, and
a modicum of independence to govern their own affairs. The Académie Française regulated the
French language and produced an official Dictionnaire, a potent instrument of social and political
control. The Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris judged patent claims. The Royal Society of
London provided occasional expert opinions to the British government on such matters as
protecting buildings against lightning strikes. Academies in Berlin and Stockholm produced
almanacs. A lesser society might aid local authorities in regional development; to this end, the
Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres of Bordeaux, published a six-volume natural
history survey of the surrounding province of Guyenne (1715–1739). In considering the advantages
offered by institutionalized expertise, one should not overlook the elements of glory and prestige
accruing to the state. In return, the major learned societies received formal recognition, legal
existence, and often financial support. Most were also free to elect and police their own members,
to publish freely, and to initiate projects.

A useful distinction can be drawn between societies per se and academies, as exemplified by the
prototypes of Royal Society of London and the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris. Generally
speaking, societies had a larger, less structured membership, received less government support, and
thought of themselves as more independent than were academies. Conversely, academies were
more clearly institutions of state, with a smaller, more restricted, and often paid membership and
with more explicitly defined official duties. (An institution’s name, however, is not a reliable guide
to its type; the Société Royale des Sciences of Montpellier, for example, was an academy.)
Although differences between academies and societies were real, it goes too far to distinguish
institutions categorically. A more accurate view sees them as functionally similar, but characteristic
of two different cultural spheres: the society was typical of maritime, Protestant, relatively more
democratic Europe, and the academy typical of Continental, Catholic, and relatively more
authoritarian regimes. In the final analysis, it is more useful to rank institutions, regardless of type,
into hierarchical categories, downward from national organizations, through regional, provincial,
and local associations, to the most ephemeral groups of amateurs.

Types of Societies

Fine arts and language academies constituted two major subgroups of eighteenth-century learned
societies, but their influence was inevitably local. Because of the more international character of
science, the scientific societies formed the most cohesive set of contemporary learned societies.
The best-studied group, they take pride of place in the larger learned society movement.
Eighteenth-century academies and societies fostered the natural sciences in a variety of ways.
Members presented the results of their research at society meetings, and learned society
proceedings—typified by the Histoire et Mémoires of the Paris Académie Royale des Sciences and
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, quickly became the primary
vehicles for the publication of original research. Although constituting only one-quarter of
contemporary journals treating the natural sciences, learned society publications contained the most
original science and were the dominant segment of the scientific periodical press in the eighteenth
century.

Academies of all sorts actively directed research by organizing prize contests which offered
financial rewards and publication outlets for work on topics set by sponsoring institutions. The
most famous was the contest of 1750 sponsored by the Dijon Académie des Sciences, Arts, et
Belles-Lettres on the social and moral effects of sciences and the arts, which was won by Jean-
Jacques Rousseau. The question posed by the Paris Academy for 1737 on the nature of fire, to
which Voltaire and Mme. de Châtelet responded, is another notable example; though neither won
the prize, the Academy published both essays by these celebrated figures. Contemporary learned
societies organized thousands of such competitions during the eighteenth century and awarded not
insignificant sums as prizes. The systematic study of these contests remains to be undertaken, but
no one doubts that learned societies thus stimulated a great deal of scientific and literary work and
animated local, national, and international communities.

By the mid-eighteenth century, European scientific societies began to formalize interinstitutional
contacts (notably through the regular exchange of publications) and to coalesce into a Europe-wide
system of institutions. The Imperial Academy in Saint Petersburg, for example, maintained a
commercium litterarium with more than twenty other learned societies. Reciprocal elections of
honorary and corresponding members reinforced these ties, and collaborative projects in the second
half of the century strengthened the international network of academies and societies that spanned
eighteenth-century Europe. In this spirit, consider several initiatives to link groups of societies
formally. Condorcet’s plan of the mid-1770s to unite French provincial academies failed, but a
provincial effort led by the Académie Royale des Belles-Lettres of Arras beginning in 1785
succeeded. A major thrust of the Société Patriotique de Hesse-Hamburg (1775) was precisely to
serve as a center to unite the diverse activities of contemporary learned societies. In Germany, a
successful formal association of German academies dates from 1794.

Scientific institutions also undertook research projects directly. The expeditions sent to Lapland
and Peru by the Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences in the 1730s to measure the shape of the
Earth and to adjudicate disputes between Newtonians and Cartesians were a celebrated example.
Led by the learned societies, the coordinated efforts to observe the transits of Venus in 1761 and
1769 rank as the largest scientific projects of the eighteenth century. In 1761, astronomers made
120 observations from sixty different locales around the world; in 1769, they produced 151
observations from seventy-seven stations globally. The network of scientific societies provided the
institutional backbone for organizing these efforts and processing the results. The initiative
sponsored by the Societas Meteorologicae Palatinae (the Meteorological Society of Mannheim) in
the years 1780–1795 to collect weather data from around the world is a less known but equally
ambitious institutional undertaking. The Mannheim society sent out cases of calibrated instruments
and received data back from stations throughout Europe and the Americas; its success can be
measured by the twelve (now impenetrable) volumes of Ephemerides it published between 1783 to
1795.

Sociologically, eighteenth-century learned societies defined local and international communities.
The number and quality of a person’s learned society memberships measured his status in the
contemporary world of learning. In a handful of instances, scientific societies provided the
institutional and economic wherewithal for the pursuit of full-time careers. Thus, the mathematical
physicist Leonard Euler (1707–1783) spent his entire professional life within the confines of the
scientific academies, beginning at the Saint Petersburg Academy (1727–1741), continuing at the
Berlin Academy (1741–1766), and ending back at Saint Petersburg (1766–1783). The case of
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), who moved from academies in Turin to Berlin and then to
Paris, likewise shows how academies formed an institutional base for professional careers in
science.

Agricultural, economic, and “patriotic” societies represent another significant subset of
Enlightenment learned societies. The movement began in Scotland with the Honourable Society of
Improvers of the Knowledge of Agriculture (1723), but the German states became a main center of
such activity, counting two hundred associations devoted to economic development and practical
affairs, including the Patriotische Gesellschaft zu Hamburg (1724), the Akademie gemeinnütziger
Wissenschaften (Erfurt, 1755), and the Kurfürstlich-Sächsisische-Ökonomische Sozietät (Leipzig,
1764). Furthermore, as Henry Lowood emphasizes, these German societies developed a specifically
German discipline, Kameralwissenschaften, the cameral sciences of public administration. The
Iberian Peninsula, not strongly endowed with scientific societies, was an active center of economic
societies, counting nearly seventy Sociedades Económicas de Amigos del País in the Old World
and the New in 1791. A related agricultural society movement spread throughout France and its
colonies beginning in the 1760s.

The ideology of the day made academies and societies institutional outposts of the Republic of
Letters, and much of their collective activity in the common culture consolidated Enlightenment
savants and institutions into the unique transnational unity known by that name. Other forces,
however, operated against Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. Different national language academies,
for example, had little in common; the work of the Dutch Maatschappij der Nederlandsche
Letterkunde (Leiden, 1766) seems not to have affected its counterparts in other nations. Moreover,
publication in lesser vernacular languages, such as English or Swedish, raised linguistic barriers.
The several efforts to translate the Handlingar of the Royal Swedish Vetenskapsakademie and the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London prove that the obstacles of language
were not limited to literary societies. The thirteen-volume Collection Académique (Paris, 1755–
1779) further exemplifies this problem and its solutions; the series translated the proceedings of
foreign academies and societies into the nominally universal language of French.

Centrifugal Forces

Various brands of nationalism tended to divide contemporary learned societies along nationalistic
lines. The great academies in France, England, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and the rest were erected
on national bases and, in part at least, for patriotic reasons. Each of Leibniz’s several plans for a
learned society for Germany, for example, incorporated notions of pan-German identity and
nationalism, as did the efforts to create a Deutsche Akademie in the eighteenth century. In Italy, the
periodical Giornale de letterati d’Italia (Venice, 1709–1740) incorporated a strong program of
Italian cultural union, and the Societá Italiana (Verona, 1782) sought the unification of Italian
savants and institutions.

Beyond nationalism, particularistic inclinations tended to atomize learned societies into regional
and local associations with only limited cultural and scientific horizons. The characteristic
development of “regional studies” (Landeskunde) in contemporary German societies may be seen
in this light, as might the stubborn independence of French provincial academies. The sixty-odd
learned associations that arose in the Low Countries in the second half of the eighteenth century
likewise privileged regional and particular biases over national and international outlooks. Many
short-lived groups in eighteenth-century England exhibited similar characteristics, but nowhere was
particularism more a factor than in politically fragmented Italy, where the least provincial academy
in the smallest provincial town jealously guarded its privileges and identity and looked on
neighboring associations with hostility. The luster of the well-studied, ecumenical great academies
easily blinds us to the reality of closed-minded small towns.

A final, divisive factor lay in differences of religious confession. Leibniz’s plans for learned
societies, for example, were grounded in an almost evangelical vision of Protestant Germany. In
contrast, German Benedictines established learned associations in several of their monasteries,
notably the Societas Litteraria Germanico-Benedictina (Kempten, 1752). Italy was full of
Renaissance-type academies devoted to the Catholic religion, and Pope Benedict XIV himself
established two academies in Rome specializing in religious (that is, Catholic) history, the
Accademia di Storia di Ecclesiastica (1741) and the Accademia di Storia di Liturgia (1748). All
these factors acted centrifugally to weaken the Republic of Letters and the international system of
learned societies.

Although the absolute number of learned societies continued to grow into the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, the “Age of Academies” ended with the French Revolution. The Jacobin
Convention closed state-sponsored societies in France in 1793, and elsewhere in Europe and in the
colonies, the period’s political and military upheavals disrupted the previous modus operandi of
learned societies. By and large, after 1815 specialized societies and strictly professional
organizations, such as the Zoological Society of London (1826) and the British Association for the
Advancement of Science (1831), superseded the general learned societies as active centers for the
production of knowledge. Learned society membership increasingly became an honor achieved at
the end of a career, rather than a post for working savants. With nineteenth-century universities
revitalized as centers for research, academies and societies likewise became less consequential.
Like so much else of the Old Regime, learned societies had become relics of the past.

[See also Academies; Libraries; Lyceums and Museums; and Salons.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brian, Éric, and Christiane Demeulenaere-Doyère, eds. Histoire et mémoire de l’Académie des
       sciences: Guide de recherches. Paris, 1996. The starting point for any research on the
       premier scientific society of the eighteenth century; summary histories of the institution and
       a wealth bibliographical and other information.

Emerson, Roger L. “The Organisation of Science and Its Pursuit in Early Modern Europe.” In
      Companion to the History of Science, edited by R. Olby et al., pp. 960– 979. London, 1990.
      An authoritative overview with appendix listing eighteenth-century scientific societies.

Frängsmyr, Tore, ed. Science in Sweden: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1739–1989.
      Canton, Mass., 1989. A collection of scholarly essays commemorating the 250th
      anniversary of this key academy; topics related to the eighteenth century include the
      academy’s astronomical and economic work, its integration into contemporary Swedish
      society, and Linnean travel.

Hahn, Roger. “The Age of Academies.” In Solomon’s House Revisited, edited by Tore Frängsmyr,
      pp. 3– 12. Canton, Mass., 1990. A sophisticated analysis by a leading scholar.

Hahn, Roger. The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803.
      Berkeley, Calif., 1971. The definitive treatment of the Paris Academy of Sciences.

Hall, Marie Boas. Promoting Experimental Learning: Experiment and the Royal Society,
      1660–1727. Cambridge, 1991. A focused study of the Royal Society through Newton’s
      presidency, by an eminent historian of science.

Hunter, Michael. Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society.
       Woodbridge, U.K., 1989. Hunter is a leading student of the Royal Society of London,
       especially in its seventeenth-century phase.

Lowood, Henry E. Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment:
     The Economic and Scientific Societies, 1760–1815. New York, 1991. An important
     extension of Schafer that sheds valuable light on circumstances in Germany.

Maylender, Michele. La storia delle accademie in Italia. 5 vols. Bologna, 1926–1930; repr. Rome,
      (n.d.). A scholarly monument and the standard source for the learned society movement in
      Italy; most associations listed are Renaissance academies from the sixteenth and
      seventeenth centuries.
McClellan, James E., III. Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century. New
      York, 1985. An overview of the scientific society movement in the eighteenth century;
      appendices list official and private academies and societies; provides access to the
      substantial earlier literature.

McClellan, James E., III. “L’Europe des académies.” Dix-Huitième Siècle 25 (1993), 153–165.
      Examines the learned society movement from the point of view of Europe and the Republic
      of Letters.

Rider, Robin E. “Bibliographical Afterword.” in The Quantifying Spirit in the 18th Century, edited
       by Tore Frängsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider, pp. 381– 396. Berkeley, 1990. A
       valuable historiographical review of the learned society movement and related themes.

Roche, Daniel. Le siècle des Lumières en province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–
       1789. 2 vols. Paris and The Hague, 1978. Magisterial and the basic source on French
       provincial academies.

Schofield, Robert E. The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and
       Industry in Eighteenth Century England. Oxford, 1963. The definitive work on this famous
       scientific club; opens a door on the contemporary world of learning in the English
       provinces.

Shafer, Robert Jones. The Economic Societies in the Spanish World, 1763–1821. Syracuse, N.Y.,
       1958. A classic source, standard on this important subset of institutions.

Stroup, Alice. A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Seventeenth-
       Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences. Berkeley, Calif., 1990. The most detailed and
       insightful study available on the seventeenth-century Paris Academy.

Sturdy, David J. Science and Social Status: The Members of the Académie des Sciences, 1666–
       1750. Woodbridge, U.K., 1995. A brilliant prosopographical study of the Paris Academy of
       Sciences; Hunter’s work on the Royal Society aside, nothing comparable exists for any
       other eighteenth-century learned society.

Voss, Jürgen. “Akademien und Gelehrte Gesellschaften.” In Aufklärungsgesellschaften, edited by
       Helmut Reinalter (Schriftenreihe der Internationalen Forschungsstelle “Demokratische
       Bewegungen in Mitteleuropa (1770– 1850),” vol. 10), 1938. Frankfurt am Main, 1993.
       Voss is a leading expert, and this solid overview provides an entrée into the extensive
       German-language literature about learned societies.

J A M E S E. M C C L E L L A N III